


Fish Tale

by whichstiel



Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergent AU, F/F, Fairy Tales, Fishing, Possession, Water Spirits, Wayward Sisters Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 06:33:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15989645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Kaia spends college vacations with her father at their isolated home on the lakeshore. Winter break should be a chance to relax before heading back to school, but something dangerous lurks under the ice.In this canon-divergent AU, Claire Novak is a hunter with close ties to Donna Hanscum and Kaia is non-magical.





	Fish Tale

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the Wayward Sisters Big Bang. This story is standalone (no art). You should check out all the fabulous art and stories posting this month at: https://waywardsistersbigbang.tumblr.com

_He who walks like a fish,_

_Talks like a fish,_

_Is a fish._

In the fog the fisherman’s shack was a black doorway floating above the frozen lake. Kaia watched it warily, the curtains in the living room shoved aside just enough for her to peek through the windowpane. She kept her body angled so it was hidden behind the thick fabric. 

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched, even all the way up here and with him down at the ice, enclosed in the shack. The shack stood alone on this side of the lake. The city on the other side gleamed in the distance, whispering, _here, here is civilization. Safety. There can be no monsters in the shadow of a city._

The lake stretched out beyond her window. From here it looked pristine, covered in gray ice and drifting snow. It looked dead, or safely asleep. But there was life stirring below the water, if you only knew how to find it. “Ice fishing,” her dad liked to tell her, “is the ultimate celebration of life, a token that the aquatic world lives on even in the darkest winter’s day.” He was right. There was life in the lake even when the air turned her breath to crystal. Even when the birds themselves didn’t venture outside. Life stirred below. 

There was also _him_.

Goosebumps broke out over her skin and burned against her sweater. Kaia pressed her palms to her wrists, pushing her fingers inside of her sleeves and willing herself fruitlessly to warm up. Ever since that day on the ice, the house felt cold to her. Like ice water. She stared at the lake and wondered what to do. 

As she watched, the fish shambled out of the shack and across the crackling ice. He wore her father’s skin, and a red flannel and overalls. Though it was cold, bitterly cold, the fish wore no coat. Kaia guessed it didn’t understand the need for it. 

The fish swam through the air in his human skin, crossing the road and walking up the short drive to their house. His hands wove at his sides gracefully like they were pushing through water, fingers pressed close together into a semblance of fins. 

Kaia drew back as the fish approached, retreating into the house with her heart in her mouth. She closed the door of her bedroom behind her and locked it, then slid her desk chair under the knob, just like she’d seen in movies. 

She could hear the fish stumble on the porch steps. He seemed to have a very poor grasp of stairways. On the fish’s first day in the house, after the incident at the lake, he had tried to ascend the stairs to go to her father’s room. He’d stared at the first step for a long time, his toes pressed up against the baseboard. Finally, with a watery sigh, he’d moved to the couch and flopped down on it. 

She’d thought he was sick, at first, and left soup next to his sleeping form, and a cooling cup of tea. He was all she had left in the world, after all. She had to take care of him. When he’d woken he was barely coherent, speaking in burbles and pushing against the soft cushions of the couch like they were a net, trapping him there. 

Kaia had called 911. By the time the ambulance had arrived, he was better. He spoke to them in single syllable words and made them go away. Then, after the door had closed behind them he turned watery dark eyes to Kaia. His mouth had pulled down too far. Too far. Like the gaping mouth of a fish. And he’d said, “Do that again, and I’ll kill you.” 

That had been five days ago. Five long days.

Kaia jumped as the front door swung open. The doorknob cracked into the wall again, sending a small shower of plaster to the steadily accumulating pile on the floor. The fish was strong. Very, very strong. She’d seen him picking his way along the shoreline, rolling a heavy fallen tree away rather than stepping over it.

She could hear the fish wearing her father’s skin make his way into the kitchen. _Stump shuffle stump._ The refrigerator door opened and closed once. Twice. A can dropped out of the pantry and rolled across the linoleum. He was always hungry. 

Slowly, Kaia backed towards her bed and pulled the long knife she kept sandwiched between her mattress and bed frame out, holding it outward and balanced on her knee. This situation was untenable. Every time she looked in the mirror, the shadows grew under her own eyes. She wanted to flee back to the safety of her dorm room. Back to the freedom of her own quiet life. Winter break was supposed to be an escape, a release. Instead, the world closed in around her like an iced-over hole, and she was trapped in this cold house as sure as a drowning woman in the water. 

“Dad,” she whispered as the fish scraped a kitchen chair across the floor. “Dad, where are you?”

~~~

When the kitchen had finally fallen silent, Kaia pushed herself off her bed, careful not to push against it hard enough to make a sound. Silently she padded across the room, gently removed the chair, and opened her bedroom door. The house was quiet.

Kaia crept down the hallway with her heart in her throat, fingers brushing the walls for support as she walked. Her eyes were wide, her ears attuned to any sound the fish might make. Something rattled low in the living room and she carefully tiptoed to the end of the hallway and peered inside.

The fish lay on the couch, arms flung over his eyes and mouth hanging open. An occasional snore rattled from his throat. Kaia tiptoed past him, heart in her throat and every hair at attention, as though any minute something cold and deadly might slash through her backside. She made her way to the front door, pulled her down coat carefully from the hook beside it, and slipped outside. 

Kaia waited on the cold front patio for a moment after she closed the door. Her breath emerged in white clouds that crystallized on her eyebrows and her ears stung from the cold. It was only after nothing happened, no sound at all could be heard from her house, that she dug into her coat pocket and pulled out a wool hat to cover her ears. She bent down to jam her socked feet into an old pair of her father’s boots that had laid half buried in snow next to an old terra cotta pot, and carefully walked down to the lake. She walked in the fish’s footprints, laying each shoe down in an exact match of the existing bootprints in the snow.

She hadn’t spoken to the fish masquerading as her father at all since his threat to kill her. But she suspected that she must not let him know that she had been down to the water. 

Kaia made her way to the ice shanty on the lake and, with one more worried glance at the house hidden behind a sparse lacework of trees, she entered. 

Her father’s ice shanty was a cheerful wooden shack. She’d helped her father paint it years ago, one summer, and the interior was done up in a bright starscape. Sunny blotches of yellow and white shone on a deep blue background, and fantastical creatures flitted among them - dragons and unicorns and cats with wings.

Not much had changed in the course of the week. A camp chair squatted near a half frozen-over hole in the ice. A cooler was shoved against the wall along with two buckets and an assortment of fishing gear in various states of readiness. A pole and a net lay near the hole in the ice. They were loose and dry and Kaia bent down to feel the tension on the line. “What do you do down here all day?” She wondered. “Are you fishing?”

She unzipped her coat and took her phone from a warm inner pocket of her sweater, thumbing on the flashlight and shining the weak beam down into the ice-choked hole. 

Something flashed in the dark water. Kaia jumped and the phone nearly fell from her hand. She pulled the phone to her chest and leaned away from the hole, panting as she looked around the shanty. There was nothing and nobody in there but herself and beyond its walls, she could hear nothing approaching. 

Her grip on her phone was almost painful and she slowly leaned forward again, higher up on her knees this time to keep her head away from whatever might be in the water below. Carefully, she shone her light in the hole again.

Again, something flashed in the dark water. This time, a silver fin rose above the surface and trembled there for a moment, like fingers waving idly in the air. “I…I have a knife,” Kaia stammered, fumbling for the folding knife she had in her pocket. Fingers trembling more from fear than from the biting cold, she pushed the blade outward until it locked. 

The silver fin cut out of the water.

“Who are you?” Kaia asked. “What do you want?”

There was a splash and Kaia raised up on her knees, trying as hard as she could to peer into the water while still keeping far enough away that nothing could reach her. A fish’s head swam into view, turning to its side in the black water. 

Kaia let out a choked sob. “Oh,” she groaned. She collapsed onto her knees and hands, palms pushing the knife and phone into the cold ice shavings on either side of the hole. “Oh my god.”

The fish clearly swam carefully to keep his head within the circle of cleared ice, his head turned outward so that one eye could look out of the water. It looked at her with the eyes of her father, human irises dilating around dark pupils. The fish rolled his human eye towards her and Kaia moaned. “Dad? Is that you?”

The fish thrashed once, like a human nodding. 

Kaia gulped and pushed her phone back into her sweater pocket. She set the knife at her knee and leaned forward. “Dad?”

The fish thrashed again.

 _This is crazy. I’m asleep. It’s a nightmare._ Disbelief crashed into Kaia for the space of three choking breaths, then she let them out and reached one hand to the fish in the water. He let her stroke him with a fingertip, lids closing at the touch. “I’m gonna get you out of here,” she whispered. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Dad. I’m gonna help you.”

On the shore, a stick cracked. 

Kaia’s head jerked up, away from the fish with her father’s eyes. The crack had been loud as a thunderbolt in the still day. 

Distantly, the ice moaned and she knew beyond anything that the fish was coming back to the shack.

Kaia’s throat closed up and she hissed at the fish in the water. “Go away. He’s coming. I’ll be back for you, I swear. But go away. Please!” And after a long moment, the fish sank into the water and with a flip of a silver fin, disappeared. 

Kaia looked around the shack desperately. The doorway to the shack pointed away from the shoreline and if she hurried, if she was fast enough and timed it just right, perhaps the fish wouldn’t see her.

With her stomach dropped to her knees, Kaia carefully stood and edged quietly to the door, easing her way outside. She stood against the wall of the shack, the only cover in the wide, white lake, and listened to the ice creak as the fish approached. Spit guttered in his throat. Now she could hear him behind the shack. Now coming around the side. 

Kaia slipped to the other side as quietly as she could, and pressed herself against the other wall. She didn’t dare to breath, scared the cloud of her breath might give her away. She didn’t dare move and prayed that he wouldn’t notice the slip slide of bootprints that led to the opposite side of the shack from the doorway.

There was a clunk and rattle of the wall against her back as the fish ricocheted off the doorframe. She could hear him now, inside the shack. There was the scrape of a camp chair against the cold, cleared ice. There was the rattle of a fishing pole being lifted; the tip clattered against the ice and nearest wall. 

Amidst the clatter, Kaia slipped away past the backside of the shack and retraced her father’s bootprints back to the shore.

When she reached the icy rocks that formed the steep shoreline, a sob dragged from her throat. Kaia dipped her nose into the lip of her coat, buried her quaking mouth into her high collared sweater, and stumbled away. 

The house loomed in front of her, cozy and isolated along the lakefront road. The thought of going back in there felt like closing herself under the ice. Panic fluttered in her chest. 

She’d looked for the keys to her father’s car. Looked for them upstairs and down. They were missing from the key rack by the door, and had been since the day she had first called an ambulance to their house. It was two miles to the nearest house. Kaia pointed her feet up the road, shoved her hands into her coat, and began to walk.

~~~

“Shit. Shit! I don’t know why I came here.” Kaia muttered, her heart thumping wildly as she stared down at her knees. _What am I supposed to even say? My dad’s possessed by a fish? He threatened to kill me? I think he’s trying to catch my dad who is also, by the way, now a fish._ She ran her fingers nervously along the worn seat cushion of the little bench in the police station’s waiting area. There were holes in the cushion and she dug one fingernail into it and pulled at it nervously. 

Every movement, every sound struck her as just slightly out of the ordinary and made her jump. She didn’t know if the monster could drive. He’d fished around in her father’s head enough to learn to speak. To forage for food in their increasingly dwindling kitchen. But the last several days he’d stayed at the house or on the lake, and she hoped he was trapped there just as she had been. So when the double doors to the station opened haphazardly, Kaia instinctively drew further into herself, tucking her elbows into her sides nervously. 

A girl walked through the swinging doors and Kaia, looking up, momentarily forgot to think. The girl was a cool eyed, slim hipped beauty in a leather jacket that was far too thin for the weather. She looked around like she owned the place and when her gaze caught Kaia’s, a slow smile spread across her lips. She jammed a cold-reddened hand into her pocket and sauntered over to Kaia, dropping down into a plastic chair on the other end of Kaia’s dilapidated bench. 

“Haven’t seen you before. What’re you in for?” she asked with a blasé affectation that failed to hide her bright interest. 

Kaia’s own curiosity dissipated like water on a steam vent. She scowled. “I’m not ‘in here’ for anything,” she bit off. “Waiting on the sheriff.”

The girl’s brows jumped. “The sheriff?” she said. “What’s so big that you need to talk to Donna?”

“None of your business,” Kaia said and turned a shoulder away. She dug her fingers into her sides and looked over at the colorful pamphlet rack on the wall. 

The girl laughed. “That’s fair,” she said. She sat quietly beside Kaia for almost a minute before she said with something edging towards contrition, “Donna’s the best. She’ll be able to help you.”

Kaia couldn’t help her disbelieving snort in reply. “Right,” she said. “I’m sure she can help me with this.” She sighed and pressed her hands to the bench instead, glancing over at the girl. “Yeah. I’m gonna...go.”

The girl looked startled and held up both hands. “Look. I’m...I’m sorry. I’ll shut my mouth. You won’t know I’m here.”

“It’s not you,” Kaia said as she white-knuckled the bench seat. Then she twisted her mouth in a shadow of a smile. “Okay, it’s kind of about you. But…” she looked around her, as the paranoia from the past few days seeped in. “She wouldn’t believe me anyway. I’m just wasting my time here.”

Instantly the girl’s expression changed. “I bet whatever it is, Donna’ll believe you.” She tilted her head consideringly. “But if you don’t want to tell her, try it out on me first?”

Kaia still hadn’t left the bench, torn between fleeing the small town and giving up on her father and her old life forever, or trying to give local law enforcement a chance. Desperation clawed at her and made her take a chance. She settled back in the seat just an inch, took a deep breath, and said, “My dad is...different. Not sick but…” Her voice dropped so quiet that she could hear the ticking of the wall clock over her words. “Controlled by something?”

“Like he’s possessed?” the girl said, equally low. 

Kaia had to suppress a frenetic laugh, watching the other girl’s earnest expression. “Crazy, right?” She moved to stand again but the girl grabbed her wrist and tugged gently, her fingers tight as a vice. 

“Not crazy,” she said. “My name’s Claire Novak and I think you really, really gotta talk to Donna and me about this. I promise you we can help.” The girl looked carefully around them as well and Kaia was struck at her sudden change in demeanor. Suddenly she seemed cautious and serious. So when she whispered, “Monsters are real. I fight them,” Kaia wanted to believe her so badly that she stayed. 

~~~

A half an hour later she sat in Sheriff Donna Hanscum’s office with the girl, Claire Novak, settled in the plush armchair beside her. “Sorry about the wait,” Donna said with a dimpled smile. “Been working on crowd control plans for winter fest.” She looked between Kaia and Claire and her smile faded a little. “Claire tells me you got an unusual story to tell us.”

Kaia, faced with the sheriff, shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Um. Yeah. It’s my dad. He’s not...himself.” In Donna’s cozy office, in the warm lamplight and soft seating, the tale seemed even more preposterous. 

“Did you smell any sulfur?” Claire asked. “Experience strange weather? Maybe black eyes?” Claire had been prevented from whispering more about monsters by the arrival of an officer with a sharp eyed canine, who’d rolled his eyes at Claire and taken a lazy seat opposite them. She made up for it now.

“I-- What?” Kaia sputtered, an agonizing lump rising in her throat. “Yes. Black eyes. I mean, no to everything else but he had - has - black eyes. Like a… Like a…”

“Demon?” Donna said gently and Kaia’s mouth dropped open.

“A what?”

“A demon,” Claire said. “He could be possessed.”

Kaia grimaced. “You say that word so easily. Possessed.” She shook her head and clenched the armrests. “But he is...possessed. I don’t know if it’s a demon.” Kaia swallowed hard and shivered, remembering the chill of the ice and her father’s eye swimming in a fish’s body in the lake. “I think he’s possessed by a fish.”

She instantly realized she’d said something wrong, looking between Donna and Claire. They shared twin looks of incredulity and confusion.

“A fish?” Donna asked, but her tone didn’t seem judgmental. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw it,” Kaia mumbled. 

“What did you see?” Claire asked, her eyes alight now with unmistakable interest. 

“Well, he was out fishing. On the lake. I went out there to give him hot chocolate. Maybe hang out for a while. I’m not that into ice fishing myself. Only did it when I was younger ‘cause, you know, it was my dad, right? I’m only home for winter break for a few more days and it seemed—” Her voice cracked and she breathed through her nose with effort until her throat felt loose enough to speak. “It seemed like a nice idea? Spend some time. So I go out there.” 

“And what did you see?” Donna spoke gently, like Kaia was a frightened animal, and Kaia gratefully met her eye. 

“There was a big splash from inside his shack. A shout. I looked inside. Thought he’d caught something big and when my eyes adjusted to the light I could see him standing there. He held this huge sturgeon in his hands. As long as his torso and silver and just…ancient. And then he fell over. I thought he slipped and I laughed at first. Like, what a clumsy thing to do. How funny! And then he was just shaking and shaking and screaming. And he just kept staring at the fish. Just staring at it, eye to eye. And I ran up to him. I wanted to help, right?

“His eyes changed then while he was laying there. They suddenly just went black. All black. Black as a fish.” Claire’s hands reached for her own and Kaia fumbled for them, clenching them in her hands as something real and warm and tangible. Kaia’s fingers twitched at the memory of clutching his coat in her hands, jostling his arms as she stared into his strange eyes. “I knocked the fish out of his hands. It flopped around on the ice and I heard a splash behind me when it went back in the water. My dad’s mouth opened wide.” Kaia shook her head at the memory. “So wide and hanging open. And he sat up and scrambled for the hole in the ice, but the fish was gone and he…he was still there. Eyes black. Wide mouth.”

“Did he say anything?” Claire asked. “Do anything suspicious?”

Kaia laughed bitterly. “What? Other than all of that? I don’t think he knew how to talk right away. I kept talking to him. Asking him if he was okay and his eyes, the whole time, were so black. So dark. I couldn’t look at him.” She shrugged. “But he was my dad, right? All I’ve got and I…I helped him up from the ice. Brought him inside. Tried to feed him. Get him warm.”

“There was a 911 call from your house,” Donna said, keying something up on her computer. “Want to tell me about that?”

“Yeah. I called for an ambulance but by the time--” her voice cracked and she cleared it vigorously. “By that time he was starting to act like a human again. But still not like my dad. Not like him at all. And that’s when he threatened to kill me.”

“And you stayed?” Claire asked with a note of surprise.

Kaia sighed. “He’s my dad,” she said.

“This happened five days ago?” Donna asked. “What’s he been up to since then?”

“Fishing. Eating. That’s pretty much it.” She screwed her mouth into a tight bow, contemplating her next words. She had told them her father was possessed by a fish and, rather than ridicule or concerned looks for her sanity, the two women sat patiently with her. Maybe they’d seen far stranger things than a fish in a man’s body. “I think my dad’s in his body - in the fish. I think he’s waiting by the hole in our ice shanty. And I think the fish is trying to catch him.”

“Donna, you ever heard of anything like this?” Claire asked. 

Donna shook her head and tapped a finger thoughtfully against her cheek. “Naw. Learn something new every time, though. You got a place to stay tonight, Kaia?” Kaia shook her head. “Good. You’re staying with us. I think we gotta break out the ol’ research before we go at this thing.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Claire, I’m done here in an hour. Can you bring Kaia home? Get a start?”

Claire ticked her tongue against her teeth and tipped her chin in acknowledgement. Her grip tightened around Kaia’s hand. “Does that work for you? We’ll research this. Figure out what this is that’s got your dad and...we’ll take care of it, okay?”

Exhaustion swept over Kaia along with a wave of relief so heady that she felt a little light headed. “Yeah. Okay, thanks.” 

They bade Donna farewell and Kaia trailed Claire out to her car. She drove an old blue beater of a sedan with a cracked rear window and a massive dent in the trunk that buckled up the metal into a sneer. As Claire cursed at her heater and blew on her hands, Kaia carefully buckled herself in and looked around. 

Despite the dilapidated appearance of the exterior of the car, the inside was well cared for. Something jabbed at her ankle from under the seat and she leaned over to peer at it, jolting back when she realized it was the hilt of what looked like a sword. She swallowed and smiled sickly at Claire. “So,” she said haltingly. “Monsters.”

“Monsters,” Claire nodded as she drove out of the parking lot. “For most of us fairy tales are just stories. It’s easy to shrug away something you don’t really see, you know?”

“Fairy tales.” Kaia couldn’t help the flat disbelief in her tone. “You telling me there are, like, fairy godmothers?”

Claire wrinkled her nose. “Dunno. More bad stuff than good. Werewolves. Ghosts. Dragons.” She flashed a grin at Kaia. “Dragons look like people most of the time, though. Much less fun.”

“Huh. So you just...learn about this stuff?” _Where? How?_

The car was silent for a while, save for the sound of pavement passing underneath. Finally, Claire said, “My dad was possessed. That’s when I found out.”

“By what?” Kaia asked. 

“Angel. He… It… It’s a long story. I’ve kind of come to accept it in a way, or at least move on. Now, I’ve met other hunters. Fought monsters. Found new family.”

“New? Donna isn’t--?”

Claire laughed. “God, no.” She ran a hand along the curves of her jacket and Kaia followed her fingers down to where they lingered on her tight-fitting jeans. “First of all, I’ve got style.” She shrugged. “Donna’s sweet. She’s been teaching me stuff. Her and Jody and a few others. And the more I learn? The more I see about the other world? Well, now I can kind of see how brave my dad was.”

“Was?” Dread pooled in Kaia’s gut. 

Claire frowned and shook her head ruefully, then said, “Hey. We’re gonna save your dad. Okay?”

“Okay.” Kaia felt very small the rest of the quiet drive to Donna Hanscum’s house.

~~~

At Donna’s home Claire pulled snacks from the kitchen and settled them both in the living room. There, she pulled out stacks of old rot-rusted books from a closed cabinet and set out her laptop. “We gotta do some research,” she explained. “Figure out what we’re up against.”

“On the internet?” Kaia asked, brows raised. “Like, anyone can find that stuff?”

“Fairy tales,” Claire explained. “Nobody believes ‘em except the people who need to.”

They sat in twin silence, Kaia thumbing through the stacks of books and Claire clicking and typing like she was just any other student studying for an exam. It felt oddly domestic, like Kaia could be sitting in her dorm’s study lounge working on math homework. 

“Oh,” Claire said excitedly after they’d made their way through a half bag of bagged popcorn. “Check this out.” She swiveled her laptop to Kaia who skimmed the screen. 

It was a page from a library’s digital archive. The book’s title, _Phantastical Phairy Stories: Origins, superstitions, and original tales_ , didn’t exactly inspire confidence. But the story Claire had found made Kaia gasp. “It’s about a man turning into a fish!” she exclaimed. “Water spirits are a common mythological trope. They can possess and entrap people. Lead people to watery deaths, etcetera etcetera…”

Claire silently pointed out a section near the bottom of the page. 

_Regional variation:_

_In the foothills of the Pyrenees this researcher found a different tale. The villagers told a story of a fish who swapped souls with a man. The eyes being the windows to the soul, the man was said to possess the eyes of a fish, and the fish possessed the eyes of a man. The water spirit then caught the human’s spirit as he swam frantically in the fish’s body, fried him over a fire, and ate him. Thereafter, the fish possessed great powers and brought terror on the villagers. When its mate attempted to rise she was killed before she could take possession of the woman offered as a sacrifice. The fish was so despondent, it drowned itself and the village was free once again._

Kaia gasped. “You think that’s why he’s trying to catch my dad? He wants to eat him and...and…”

“Become more powerful?” Claire clicked her tongue thoughtfully. “Maybe. This doesn’t say how you kill it, though. Or how you get it out of the human’s body.” 

They filled Donna in on what they’d discovered when she arrived, and the trio worked into the night filling in the gaps and assembling a plan. Kaia fell asleep that night wrapped in a blanket on the couch. She felt warm and safer than she’d felt all week under the watchful eye of Claire and Donna. Her dreams were filled with cold water and the passing shadows of fish.

~~~

The morning’s light groaned across the lake, dismal and gray in the overcast sky. Kaia walked across the frozen ice, following the snowy path of footprints out to the black shack. He was out there - the fish. 

She curled one thickly gloved hand into as close a fist as she could manage and narrowed her eyes against the wind that blew in from the west. In the other hand, she carried their large insulated thermos like a shield over her chest. Kaia took deep breaths. Her heart seemed to beat unevenly. _We have a plan. We’re ready. I’m ready._ She wished she could believe it. 

Her stomach hurt from tension and hunger. She hadn’t been able to eat this morning, knowing what was ahead. Kaia rounded the corner of the shack and peered inside. The fish sat slumped in her father’s chair. Enormous gray bags shadowed his eyes and his lips were cracked and blue. He wore only her father’s long johns now, the coat and carharts long discarded as though he shed more each day. He looked up at her with a sneer.

“Uh. Hey dad!” Kaia’s voice sounded too bright, utterly false considering their recent interactions. Still, she raised up the thermos. “Brought you some hot chocolate. Mind if I hang?”

“Go away,” he grunted. 

Kaia’s smile collapsed, but she stepped forward into the shadow of the shack. “I’ll just...chill out for a while.” When he didn’t make a move towards her, she sidled over to an upturned bucket and sat down on it. “I thought we should talk, you know? I’m heading back to school soon.”

He sat impassive and quiet.

“I miss you,” she continued. “I miss you so much, dad. Sometimes I just want to hook you in and...and reel you back home. And then hug and like, change places.” The fish continued to sit impassively and she relaxed an incremental amount and continued. “I really think we could reconnect. Fight the monsters that are keeping us apart if only you would just grab onto that hook and let me--”

The reel in the fish’s hands spun. At first the line loosed with a tiny, short whir. Then it spun harder and the fish’s eyes seemed to light up at it, widening like great, dark moons. He pulled at the line and reeled it in. The moment a fish broke through the water, Kaia knew it was her father. His eyes rolled wildly around the shack as soon as he breached the air and seemed to light upon her. 

The fish reached for the sturgeon’s gills and dug his gloved hands into them, hauling Kaia’s father from the water. The fish’s mouth opened into a toothy grin, then opened further, ready to bite. “Now!” Kaia shouted. 

At her cry, Donna and Claire burst through the doorway of the ice shanty, Donna with her gun drawn and glinting silver as scales in the half light. Claire with her gloved hands empty and spread wide like she was waiting for a football pass.

The fish jumped backwards and slipped on the ice, landing hard on his back with a sick slap. The sturgeon flew from his arms and slid to the wall of the shanty where it flexed and writhed in the air, gills gaping and human eyes wide and rolling. Claire jumped for the fish’s outspread hands and pulled at one of his mittens, tearing it free and hurling it across the shack. “Donna!” Claire shouted as she rolled away from the fish’s retaliatory blow. “Get the other one off!”

Kaia scrambled around the hole in the ice, feet sending the fishing pole skittering. There was a sick sound of bone hitting flesh and Claire went flying across the shack, slamming into the wall hard enough to skid the whole structure a few inches.

The fish grinned at his little victory, which was just enough distraction for Donna to pin him by the shoulder with her boot and spin down to grab his other mitten. “The fish, Kaia!” Donna shouted and her and Kaia bent to pick up her father’s struggling body and haul the heavy fish over to the human body flailing against Donna’s assault. 

She threw the silver fish down on her father’s body and the fish’s night-black eyes widened as it reached instinctively for it. Her father writhed in the fish’s grasp until, with a mighty heave, it thrust itself high enough to meet the fish’s eye. 

Instantly, they both stilled. As Kaia watched, color leached back into her father’s eyes, and the silver fish’s eyes became deep black pools once again. “Dad?” Kaia asked with hope choking her and her father’s eyes, now in the rightful body, swiveled to her. “Dad! Close your eyes.” 

In the chaos and bustle of the struggle, the fish had flipped onto the ground beside her father, bowing and flexing his long body in an effort to slide back into the water. Kaia threw herself on the fish and then Claire was there, bringing a knife down swiftly and slicing into the struggling fish as it snapped and whipped at them. 

The blade hissed steam as it went through the fish’s flesh and something like sublimating snow burbled out of the wound in translucent clouds. The strong tail flipped once. Twice. And then it was still.

Kaia lay on the cold ice, body entangled with Claire’s and the dead fish on the ice. For a moment, all she did was breathe. In. Out. 

“Kaia?” Her dad said, breaking the silence. He coughed. “Kaia? Baby? I heard your voice.” His voice, so warm and so different now that he was free, almost broke her apart. She pushed herself up and struggled across the ice to him. 

Kaia touched his cheek. Traced a finger along his shadowed eyes, now blessedly human again. “You’re back,” she said, with something like hysterical glee bubbling just below the surface. “You’re back.”

~~~

They took the shack down together as the sky cleared the next day. Against a backdrop of blue, Kaia heaved the sledgehammer up and down, sending it into the boards of the fishing shanty and watching shards of it rain down onto the rocky shore. 

Above them, bare trees stretched like a rough canopy, turning their shoreline into a comforting cave. They worked in silence. Kaia had spent the previous day filling her dad in on what had transpired. Donna and Claire sketched in the reality of monsters to the two of them before Donna and Claire took their leave. 

Her father paused and tapped his crowbar against his leg. “You think you’ll go swimming in here again?”

Kaia made a face. “There’s a pool at the university gym. I’m good.”

He laughed. “Donna tells me there’s a talisman to ward against more.”

“Of course there is,” Kaia said, refusing to rise to his bait. “Wait, when did she tell you that? You got something you need to tell me?” she asked teasingly.

Her father made a face. “I’m allowed to make friends. She texted me this morning.” He cleared his throat and grinned. “And...we’ll see.”

Kaia raised one suspicious eyebrow. “Okay,” she said, but was interrupted from further interrogation by the rattling blue sedan that drove down the coastline road and parked under the trees just up the slope from where they worked. 

Claire climbed out of the car and waved at them. It was warmer today, so her leather jacket was somewhat less ridiculous, and she wore a bulky wool hat shoved over her trailing curls and matching gloves. Kaia smiled and waved back at her as Claire started down the steep path to the ice. She could feel her face grow pink, and hoped it could be explained away by the cold.

“Hmm,” her father said, setting his crowbar to another board and pulling at it until it sprang free. “You got something you want to tell me?”

Kaia rolled her eyes and swung the sledgehammer high. “I’m allowed to make friends. And we’ll see,” she said, and brought it down. Now that she knew that creatures prowled the depths of their world unseen, Kaia felt like she was flailing. She had to find her footing. And she would, though it might take some time. But with her dad at her side again, and the beautiful woman descending their rough steps to greet her with a smile… 

Kaia dropped the sledgehammer, leaning the handle against the shattered wall and scrubbing her hands against her hips. “Well,” she said with a smile that encompassed both Claire and her dad. “Who’s up for some hot chocolate?”


End file.
